Prof Julian Allwood from St Catharine's College, Cambridge, sums it up by saying: "So many of us would like to have a solution based on inventing a new technology. But unfortunately inventing it isn't the problem.
"What matters is the speed at which we can scale things up. You can bring out a new phone and sell it very quickly but you can't bring out a new power station quickly, so the solutions we need have to be fundamentally based on technologies that already exist - and about doing things differently.
"Because these materials [paper, steel, cement, plastic and aluminium] have been made in such high volumes - and have been so cheap - we've used them wastefully."
Prof Allwood says he's optimistic we can still calm climate change - but warns that in future we must find ways of using less material.